On the north side of Broadway downtown is the Hermitage Hote l, Nashville's first million-dollar hotel when it opened in 1910. After a $20 million renovation in 2002, the hotel, which is part of The Riverstone Group along with The Jefferson Hotel in Richmond and Albemarle County's Keswick Hall, received its AAA Five Diamond rating. From its grand lobby with a painted-glass skylight to its bath-drawing service, the hotel exudes Southern graciousness. And where else can you find Southern Foodways Alliance documentaries playing on the in-house television channel?

The hotel also has its own garden (which guests can volunteer in) five miles away and its own cattle farm called the Double H. Both properties play into what is offered at the hotel's Capitol Grille restaurant, headed by executive chef and farmer Tyler Brown. From a golden buttermilk breakfast biscuit served with Brown's pork-and-pepper sock sausage to a blue-plate lunch special of sliced Double H roast beef, buttermilk mashed potatoes and collard greens, there was no need for supper.

On Rutledge Hill, south of Broadway, sits chef Sean Brock's newest Husk restaurant in a converted 1880s mansion. A huge chalkboard lists familiar Virginia product names like Rappahannock River Oysters and Foggy Ridge Cider. My Bear Creek Farm pork, succotash and West African mustard greens were a perfect Southern blend. A few blocks away on Peabody is the new Pinewood Social , a coffeehouse-restaurant-bowling alley in an old trolley barn.

In East Nashville, you can enjoy a cozy dinner at Margot Café , founded in 2001 by chef Margot McCormack, who has been called the "Alice Waters of Nashville"; and be sure to stop by artisan chocolatiers Olive and Sinclair , which offers public factory tours on Saturdays.

The 18-block Germantown neighborhood dating to the 1850s houses some of Nashville's finest restaurants, including City House . A Thursday-night dinner started with a tangy Bandit, a cocktail combining Averna with grapefruit juice, and finished with the best panna cotta I've eaten, laced with blackberries, topped with cream and garnished with crumbled oatmeal cookies. The house-made linguine with chickpeas, fennel, kale and chilies was another bright spot.

A visit with friends who live in Sylvan Park meant a jumbo chicken-tender dinner buffet, complete with pimento macaroni and cheese, from Hattie B 's. My friends ordered the "damn hot" chicken for me, but I intend to try "the shut-the-cluck-up" version next time. The finale of this truly Nashvillian meal was a sour cream Bundt cake drenched in caramel icing by Leland Riggan's Dessert Designs . Lick the fork and go back for more. That's what we all did, and you can, too, since they ship via UPS!

Don't Miss

Yes, the Ryman Auditorium , home to the Grand Ole Opry from 1943 to 1974, is definitely worth a stop (A Prairie Home Companion will broadcast from there on May 10), but the recent expansion of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in the growing South of Broadway (SoBro) neighborhood last month is truly something to sing about. The 210,000-square-foot expansion opened in April, more than doubling the museum's size and connecting it to a new Omni hotel. The iconic letterpress poster company Hatch Show Print also moved inside the museum, and the new 1.2-million-square-foot convention hall, Music City Center, which has a 4-acre green roof, is nearby, too. Also new is the Johnny Cash Museum , which opened last May. The 18,000-square-foot trove of Cash family memorabilia has a wide range of items on display, including tin cups from Folsom Prison, where Cash recorded his famous live album.